I didn’t know there was a USA area known as the “low country.” My limited geography terms are “heartland”—“big valley”—“Rockies”—“panhandle”—“low and high desert”—“big sky”—“Appalachia”—“central valley” and a few more derogatory names for Texas.The low country has long hot and humid summers lasting from mid-March through October. We spent two of the most humid days I’ve ever felt in Charleston, South Carolina last week. It is a gorgeous little town filled with incredible architecture, great restaurants, quaint hotels, B&Bs, and a free bus-trolley to take you from place to place. The “museum mile” can’t be appreciated in two days. I recommend this visit be after November 1st and before April 1st.

This is the first time I ever felt my ears sweat…seriously—they were the last part of my body to give up whatever water content was left.

The low country spreads through four counties: Beaufort, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper. Tourism drives the economy is this area. Most of the land lies at sea level so we probably won’t have this part of our country by the turn of the century. See it now because your grandchildren won’t be able to.

Many of the old homes are built in the “federal” architecture style and have tours during daylight hours. They don’t have an eye-catching appeal to me on the outside, but the interior rooms are magnificent and unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

But that’s where my brain-heart switch would punch me in the gut. The soft-spoken southern accents of the docents leading the tours were like sweet honey covering up a bee-sting. I can recall one of the elderly ladies saying something like this: (read with your version of a southern accent)

“Mr. Manigault arrived here from France in 1787 and in just two generations accumulated great wealth with his large rice plantation. But the summers on the plantations were so hot and humid along with the malaria and bugs that the Manigault’s and other plantation owners came into Charleston and built these fine summer-time mansions to escape the heat and take advantage of the breezes from the bay. Mr. and Mrs. Manigault left over 800 slaves (gut-punch) at the plantations and only brought 20 of their slaves (punch) here to run this household. These are the back stairs the slaves used (punch) to go to the separate small building where they cooked and prepared the food. The other separate building over the horse and buggy stables are where the slaves were quartered in dorm-style rooms up top (final punch).”JOSEPH MANIGAULT HOME REAR VIEW

I’m not sure if Mr. Cliven Bundy and some of the other turd-brained militiamen and Faux News anchors who support him have ever actually seen a plantation or “summer-home” of the plantation owners. If they have then they are not stupid as I suspect but evil-minded. Cliven wondering aloud if maybe the Negro was better off as a slave made me want to give him an opportunity to live that life and find out for himself. His group really believes that “free market capitalism” is trading production for labor…they insert “slave” labor. Their idea of the real America is a twisted sense of entitlement.

I believe Henry Ford could have gained tremendous wealth by using slaves on his assembly line instead of paid labor. But Henry Ford believed in a different type of capitalism. He evolved from the slave-owning founding-fathers who forgot to include woman, slaves and non-land owning Americans when they interpreted their own words of “equal rights.”